HOW THAD, REAGAN AND I CAN GET A LITTLE...INTENSE

Chanced upon this email, naaliw ako :D Our email discussion about Philippine tourism, haha! Jigs and I vs Thad! I know it's long, pero bakit ba. Haha!

Thad xxxxx@bsp.gov.ph wrote:


Well in terms of natural sceneries, totoo ngang mas maganda sa Pilipinas kaysa sa Malaysia. Pero kung titignan mo naman yung infrastructure nila compared sa atin, and yung ease of transporting the tourists, plus yung law and order nila na tourist friendly, napag-iiwanan tayo..Tignan nyo yung nandun sa ad, Petronas Towers, Malaysian Grand Prix, Malaysia Aerospace Expo, Mega Carnival Sale, wala tayong maipagmamalaking ganon. Boracay, Bohol, Palawan natin, di naman natin inaalagaan (di ba't ang taas na ng chloroform content sa Bora dahil sa waste problem nila?) Dapat iimprove natin ang transport system going to our Islands and mag-lagay tayo ng mga events which would attract tourists such as sa Singapore counterpart ng Malaysian Carnival Sale eh yung Singapore Shopping Festival, and sa Hong Kong meron din yun. Sa Singapore meron sila Fashion Festival, Food Festival and Arts and Cultural Expo. Kung tutuusin mas mura sa Manila pero yung malls natin hiwa-hiwalay...at kung sa Divisoria mo sila papupuntahin, good luck kung di sila ma-isnatchan or magoyo. Very tourist unfriendly, kahit na magaling tayo mag-english...Tsaka dapat talaga iimprove na natin yung airport natin. Sa lahat ng airport na napuntahan ko, NAIA ang pinaka-panget. Talo pa tayo ng Thailand, ang ganda at ang laki nung Suvhanabumi Airport nila.

Kaya sad to say, kahit -ipromote mo ang tourism natin, hindi tayo makaatract ng sindaming tourists...alam niyo bang ang tourists natin per year eh nag-aaverage lang ng almost 2 million while sa singapore 15 million, Thailand 10 million and Malaysia nasa 8 million na..Malapit na nga tayong abutan ng Vietnam and Cambodia na sa 1.5 million tourist na sila per year.....baket ganon? anong meron sila na wala tayo, ganung mganda naman ang natural sceneries natin, mas cheap ang goods dito at marunong tayong mag-english? Sagot: lack of infrastructure: pangit na transpo system, rampant crimes against foreigners (ATIVAN gans, mandurukot, etc.) and feeling ko inaalis pa nga natin yung mga potential tourist spots natin sa metro. Like yung Jai ALai Building, yung Mehan Gardens na dinemolish ni Atienza, tapos si Lim naman inalis yung mga bars and clubs along baywalk!! Paanong pupunta tourists sa Manila to have a good time? Tapos, yung planong pagtatayo ng gaming metropolis ala-Macau, tinututulan ng Catholic church, immoral daw!!


Kaya nga sad to say, I really am not fond of going out of town sa Pinas, mas gusto ko pang pag-ipunan yung Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau at China na trip kung sakali man... :-(



----- Original Message ----
From: jigs austria
To: xxxxxxxx@bsp.gov.ph;
Sent: Monday, November 19, 2007 4:54:40 PM
Subject: Re:


hehe, tama ka rin naman thad, pero sa totoo lang, sa maynila lang naman kasi nakatuon ang mga pangit na bagay na naiisip mo about sa pinas e. sa manila, talagang ganun, sira na, dito kasi nagsiksikan ang mga nag akalang nasa manila ang katuparan ng mga pangarap nila, though pwede pa rin namang irehabilitate ito. politika lang ang sumisira sa totoo lang.

kapag namasyal ka sa ibang lugar, sa labas ng metro manila, maraming tourist-friendly na mga lugar pa rin. hello down south lang - visayas, mindanao, e mamamangha ka sa ganda ng mga simbahan, beaches, bundok -- oo, pawang mga natural sceneries nga, pero dahil yun nga ang comparative advantage natin over sa ibang SEAsian countries e, bukod sa fact na talagang kakaiba, one of a kind, natural na accomodating talaga ang mga pinoy/pinay, e kelangang yun ang gamitin natin to attract tourists (though may kanya-kanya tayong natural resources na sobrang yaman talaga).

given na kasi na hindi maganda ang mga infrastructures sa atin e -airport, malls, roads, bridges etc.... pero alam mo ba kung ano ang parating sinasabi ng mga foreigners na nakapunta na rito, kung bakit sila bumabalik? -- dahil sa mga tao, kasi iba ang warmth na ibinibigay ng mga pinoy sa kanila, at madali tayong makisama at pakisamahan. yun ang dapat nating iproject, at doon, wala na talagang laban ang ibang nasyon sa atin.

yung pelikula ni izza calzado na batanes, maganda yun. hindi kinailangan ng magarang airport, ng matataas na buildings, magagarang malls, at kung anu-ano pa, pero sure ako na kapag napanood yun ng mga turista e darami pa lalo ang papasyal dun.

sa ilocos at cagayan regions, naku, hindi ka mauubusan ng magagandang lugar na pupuntahan. sa bicol region - kelangan lang talagang ipromote. wag na lang nating pakaisipin masyado yung mga kababayan natin na talagang walang balak umasenso. pati yung mga nabinbin na projects ng mga pulitiko nating pamumulitika lang ang inaatupag.

maganda na ang nasimulan ni gordon noon. magaling sobra, talagang pinagbudgetan yung mga ads ng wow philippines. marami lang pinoy na ayaw kasing iisa lang ang sumikat. di nila alam, hahatakin din tayo nun pataas lahat kung sinuportahan lang natin. lahat kasi gustong maging bida. yun lang naman ang hindi maganda.

sa tingin ko, hindi na natin kakailanganing hintayin pang makapagtayo pa tayo ng mga infrastructures na kagaya ng sa hongkong, singapore, malaysia, para maipromote natin ang ganda ng bansa natin (though of course, mas ok pag meron din tayo), pero kasi kahit wala pa ang mga yun e likas na talagang maganda ang pinas.


Sam wrote:



sang ayon ako kay reagan, thad. it's not the infrastructures that make us tourist-unfriendly. remember that the tourists that flock to our place have come from countries which have superior buildings, they don't need a blasted mall to enjoy our country. they don't need to spot a sanfrancisco-esque bridge to be awestruck. they are not after these modern conveniences because if they are, then why the hell did they have to leave their countries in the first place?

what are they after? beaches. falls. lakes. mountains. festivals - and we have plenty. i still believe that our country exudes that charm that no other uber-techie country can provide. we have the most breathtaking landscapes - batanes, sagada, dumaguete, camiguin. we have a million reasons to stand out, and no, we dont have to shell a million bucks to build some goddamn building to parallel ourselves with malaysia, thailand, singapore. these countries you have mentioned have resorted to technology to salvage/redeem the little resources that they have. call it artificial/plastic tourism, their attempts (successful attempts, yes i admit that) to make themselves known in the world. the beauty with us, is we have all our resources down pat and the effort that needs to be done has to be directed towards its promotion na lang. andyan na eh, ipromote mo na. we must not aspire to be the country that hosts some grand prix, we're humble enough to admit that we can't pull that off. and shopping sales? virtually hard to pull off, considering that we don't have a conglomerated shopping company of sorts.

my point is? CONCENTRATE AND INVEST AND BANK ON WHAT WE HAVE. My god, I just can't stress enough HOW BEAUTIFUL THE PHILIPPINES IS. I'm its number one fan, and while I do enjoy/relish the idea of hitting another countries, nothing beats the fact that a paradise/a mecca is always a busride/boatride away.

DOT should do its homework and start spreading the word now. If we keep cowering before other countries, what will ever happen to us?

to add to my point earlier, i also disapprove of pagcor's gaming city, not because of puritanical reasons, mainly because it's too damn expensive, they might as well use the funds for something else, what's that something else? promotion of the country. i cant say that enough.

and as for the crime rates: who says its 100% safe to travel these days? Countries like NZ, Sweden and UK hold the highest crime rate, but nothing's stopping people from going to these places?

It's sad that ang baba baba na ng tingin sa bansa natin, prinopromulgate pa natin ang hegemoniyang ito.


Haha yun lang! We should be awarded by the DOT! :D

THIS IS SAD. BUT COOL.

From: http://garfield-minus-garfield.net

Sans Garfield, Jon is pretty much a lonely guy.

MAKE ME CRY, WILL YOU

The joint suicide of André Gorz, the French philosopher and founder of the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, and his British-born wife Dorine, who was suffering from a fatal disease, has turned the love letter that he wrote to her into a surprise bestseller.

Gorz, 84, a friend of Jean-Paul Sartre, and Dorine, 83, committed suicide by lethal injection at their home in the village of Vosnon, east of Paris, on September 22. Two days later a friend found them lying side-by-side in their bedroom.

"I took a photo of you, from behind: you are walking with your feet in the water on the beach of La Jolla. You are 52. You are amazing. It’s one of the images of you that I like best.

I looked at that photo for a long while after we got back home, when you told me you wondered if you didn’t have some sort of cancer. You’d already wondered that before we left for the United States but hadn’t wanted to say anything to me. Why not? ‘If I have to die, I wanted to see California beforehand,’ you told me calmly.

Your endometrial cancer hadn’t been picked up in your annual checkup. Once the diagnosis was made and the date of the operation set, we went to spend a week in the house you’d designed. I carved your name in the stone with a chisel. That house was magic. All the spaces had a trapezoidal shape. The bedroom windows looked out over the treetops.

The first night, we didn’t sleep. We were both listening to each other breathing. Then a nightingale started singing and a second one, further away, started answering. We said very little to each other. I spent the day digging and looked up from time to time at the bedroom window. You were standing there, motionless, staring into the distance. I am sure you were practising taming death in order to fight it without fear. You were so beautiful and so determined in your silence that I couldn’t imagine you giving up living.

I took time off from Le Nouvel Observateur and shared your room at the clinic. The first night, through the open window, I heard all of Schubert’s Ninth Symphony. It is etched in me, every note. I remember every moment spent at the clinic. Pierre, our doctor friend from the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), who came to hear your latest news every morning, said to me: ‘You are going through moments of exceptional intensity. You’ll remember this always.’ I wanted to know what chances the oncol-ogist gave you of surviving five years. Pierre brought me the answer: ‘50-50.’

When you came out of the clinic we went back to our house. Your spirit thrilled me and reassured me. You’d escaped death and life took on a new meaning and a new value. A friend immediately understood this when you saw him at a party. He stared into your eyes for a long time and he said to you: ‘You’ve seen the other side.’ I don’t know how you responded or what else you said. But these are the words he said to me, straight afterwards: ‘Those eyes! Now I understand what she means to you.’

You had seen ‘the other side’; you’d come back from the land no one comes back from. This changed your perspective. We made the same resolution without consulting each other. An English Romantic once summed it up in a sentence: ‘There is no wealth but life.’

During the months you were convalescing, I decided to take my retirement at 60. I started counting the weeks till I could pack up. I took pleasure in cooking, in tracking down organic produce that would help you get your strength back, in ordering the specially tailored medications that a homeopath had recommended you take.

Ecology became a way of life and a daily practice without ceasing to imply the requirement of a completely different civilisation. I’d reached the age where you ask yourself what you’ve done with your life, what you would like to have done with it. I had the impression of not having lived my life, of having always observed it at a distance, of having developed only one side of myself and being poor as a person. You were, and always had been, richer than I was. You’d blossomed and grown in every dimension. You were at home in your life; whereas I’d always been in a hurry to move on to the next task, as though our life would only really begin later.

I asked myself what was the inessential that I needed to give up in order to concentrate on the essential. I told myself that, to grasp the reach of the upheavals that were looming in every domain, there had to be more space and time for reflection than the full-time exercise of my profession as a journalist allowed.

I was amazed that my leaving the journal, after 20 years of collaboration, was neither painful to myself nor to others. I remember having written that, at the end of the day, only one thing was essential to me: to be with you. I can’t imagine continuing to write, if you no longer are. You are the essential without which all the rest, no matter how important it seems to me when you are there, loses its meaning and its importance. I told you that in the dedication of my last work.

Twenty-three years have gone by since we went off to live in the country, first in ‘your’ house, which radiated a sense of meditative harmony. A harmony we enjoyed for only three years. They started building a nuclear power station nearby and that drove us away. We found another house, very old, cool in summer, warm in winter, with huge grounds. It was a place where you could be happy.

Where there was only a meadow you created a garden of hedges and shrubs. I planted 200 trees there. For a few years we still did a bit of travelling; but all the vibrating and jolting around involved in any means of transport, no matter what, triggers headaches and pain through your whole body. Arach-noiditis has forced you, little by little, to abandon most of your favourite activities. You hide your suffering. Our friends think you’re ‘in great shape’. You’ve never stopped encouraging me to write. Over the 23 years we’ve spent in our house, I’ve published six books and hundreds of articles and interviews.

We’ve had dozens of visitors from every corner of the globe and I’ve given dozens of interviews. I surely have not lived up to the resolution made 30 years ago: to live completely at home in the present, mindful above all of the richness that is our shared life. I’m now reliving the instants when I made that resolution with a sense of urgency. I don’t have any major work in the pipeline. I don’t want ‘to put off living till later’ - in Georges Bataille’s phrase – any longer.

I am as mindful of your presence now as in the early days and would like to make you feel that. You’ve given me all of your life and all of you; I’d like to be able to give you all of me in the time we have left.

You’ve just turned 82. You are still beautiful, graceful and desirable. We’ve lived together now for 58 years and I love you more than ever. Lately I’ve fallen in love with you all over again and I once more carry inside me a gnawing emptiness that can only be filled by your body snuggled up against mine.

At night I sometimes see the figure of a man, on an empty road in a deserted landscape, walking behind a hearse. I am that man. It’s you the hearse is carrying away. I don’t want to be there for your cremation; I don’t want to be given an urn with your ashes in it. I hear the voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing, ‘Die Welt ist leer, Ich will nicht leben mehr’ and I wake up. I check your breathing, my hand brushes over you.

Each of us would like not to survive the other’s death. We’ve often said to ourselves that if, by some miracle, we were to have a second life, we’d like to spend it together. ’

Extracted from Lettre à D. Histoire d’un Amour by André Gorz. Translated by Julie Rose

7:58 AM

That's the time I arrived here in the office.

Wala lang. It's just kind of momentous you know? Kailangan idocument!





But omigas I'm so sleepy O.O

I HAVE NO WORDS

I don't know how many times I have watched this. More than 20 times perhaps? GOD HOW I LOVE THIS. DLed the clip already in hopes of memorizing the steps someday. Hehe. A girl could always dream :)

(And so it was that our afternoon here in the office was defined by sending dance clips to one another and from time to time, attempting the dance steps ourselves at the risk of being seen by the bosses. Happened to me already: Sir I. caught me dancing to Ray of Light and I didn't know what to do but grin rather impishly and run back to my cubicle *MEEEEEH*)

Hay, basta watch it. Breathtaking.